August 2, General Meeting:
David Sundstrom, the Chairperson of the Environmental Task Force for Long Beach's
Strategic Plan was our guest speaker. He delivered a very interesting review of the
efforts in putting together the Strategic Plan. He also spoke to our plan to reconfigure
the breakwater and how our two efforts share some common goals.
August 7, Beach Survey:
Ten top-notch Task Force volunteers showed up at Mother's Beach, custom surveys in hand
and a bag of give-aways gratis for survey participants. Aside from a very large family
reunion from out of town, we were disappointed to discover a rather meager turnout at Long
Beach's most popular beach on a typical summer Saturday. Furthermore, even after careful
deliberation over the survey questions, we discovered some of the intricacies of market
surveying. We found that the respondent is strongly swayed by our introduction and we got
the feeling that the respondents thought we were city officials and therefor gave us the
most polite responses possible--not exactly what we were expecting. Lesson learned--backed
to the drawing board. We're considering an alternative: questioning the crowds at Seal
Beach to determine if they live near Long Beach and why they chose Seal Beach instead. If
you've got comments or ideas on this subject, please forward them to Gordana Kajer at gordana@deltanet.com.
Volunteer Water Testing:
The responsibility of getting our water quality testing program off the ground has been
on the shoulders of Monica Glatzel with immense help from Shannon James. Monica has had to
relinquish her position because of work pressures. The Task Force is immensely grateful
for the tremendous work that these two have put in for the benefit of us and the beach
community. They will continue to be active in the Task Force and will perform testing on
an as-needed basis. Emiko Kobayashi has stepped up to run the program and is doing a
fantastic job. We are in our second month of regularly-scheduled testing at designated
locations. The testing we are doing is important because the health department testing is
solely focused on sewage/bacteria. We are attempting to gauge the larger picture of the
health of our body of water. We do this by conducting chemical analysis. For instance, we
are testing parameters such as pH, salinity, dissolved oxygen, ammonia nitrate and phenol
presence. If you'd like to get involved, it's not too late, please email Emiko at ekobayas@csulb.edu.
Water Quality Reporting:
The local papers have reported failing health grades for several area beaches this past
month. The locations haven't been specified in the Press-Telegram, but we've reviewed the
raw data and it seems that the beaches with unacceptable bacteria readings are limited to
between the Belmont Pier and the L.A. River. This further bolsters our contention
that not only proximity to a noxious source (the river), but stagnancy is an issue
affecting water quality--the peninsula beaches have not received failing grades. You can
easily find the latest easy-to-understand report card of water health (relevant to
bacteria) at Health the Bay's website at http://www.healthebay.org/baymap/.
August 16, Executive Meeting:
We discussed possible locations for the wine-tasting fundraiser and delegated
responsibilities for following up on leads. We decided to become co-sponsors, with Justin
Rudd of the half-hour beach clean-ups on the 3rd Saturday of every month and committed $50
per event to award the person who picks up the most cigarette butts. We decided to create
a newsletter as part of our actions of forming an official Long Beach Chapter of the
Surfrider Foundation.
August 21, Monthly Beach Clean-Up:
We had a rousing turnout of 140 people at the boat launch ramp. Breakwater Task Force
volunteers set up our tent and signed up the volunteers and dispensed bags and gloves. For
a half-hour the volunteers spread out to the peninsula and toward the Belmont pier
collecting an awful lot of litter. This event is really gaining momentum and we expect it
to harness the coastal stewardship that we know our citizens have but have needed
something like this as a way to focus it.
August 24, Meeting with Rep. Steve Horn:
Task Force Chair, Robert Palmer and senior Surfrider Foundation member, Dr. Gordon Labedz were granted a meeting with our congressional representative Horn. We were interested in finding out more information about the $300,000 budget item that he is pushing through congress to study on the effect the breakwater has on the erosion of the beach. (This feasibility study is a follow-up to a 1997 Army Corps of Engineers' reconnaissance study that determined the breakwater was a likely factor in the erosion. This study will not address removal or configuration options). Rep. Horn was not able to shed much light on the details of the funding request. Also, he did not go out on any limbs to endorse nor discourage our efforts. He maintained that he would honor the decisions our our L.B. city council. On the bright side, he had heard of our campaign and it deserved his time and attention. We left a binder of Task Force literature, reports and press coverage for him or his staff to review.
August 28 & 29, Surfrider Summit in San Diego:
This event drew Surfrider Foundation volunteers from the chapters all over the country as well as Brazil, Australia and Japan to a board of director's meeting, the introduction of Surfrider's new executive director and a seminar series to discuss a host of coastal environmental topics. One of the presentations was by our own Kalon Morris who discussed the details of his senior thesis while he was at Harvard titled, "Physical and Environmental Changes from the Proposed Removal of the Long Beach, CA, Breakwater: Implications for Sand Transport, Beach Profiles, Circulation and Water Quality". This is the same report that was delivered to each of our council members and the city manager. A few of our Breakwater Task Force members attended the summit and learned quite a bit that we hope to apply to our efforts in Long Beach.
August 31, Political Education Sub-committee:
The first meeting of this group took place last Tuesday chaired by Rob Russell. The
reason for forming this committee is because the Breakwater Task Force recognized that too
much time was passing in between meetings with the council members and the mayor. We also
felt certain that some of them harbor misconceptions about our intentions and motivations.
The sub-committee decided on the following goals: meet with each representative, develop a
rapport, educate them, promote the council's destiny as a lead agency of this cause,
promote the need for the council to fund the necessary Environmental Impact Study (EIS)
and respond to issues, ad hoc, that may jeopardize our goal of restoring the shore.